


IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EASY

by Zoya1416



Series: If Ever I Would Leave You [1]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Beta Colony, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, SPOILERS FOR ACC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-14
Updated: 2013-10-14
Packaged: 2017-12-29 09:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On Beta Colony, Donna Vorrutyer reflects on her decision to fight Richars for the countship. During Civil Campaign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EASY

**Author's Note:**

> If ever I would leave you  
> It wouldn't be in summer.  
> Seeing you in summer I never would go.  
> From Camelot

Resting on a soft bed in a private surgery waiting room of the Northwest Hospital of Beta Colony, Donna Vorrutyer found a surge of anxiety she hadn't expected. It should have been easy to accept this final phase of her sex change, no, gender reassignment as they called it here. When she'd fled Barrayar with a sample of Pierre's DNA, all she could think of was the three month deadline between her motion of impediment and the Council of Counts' hearing. She hadn't anticipated the mood swings.

She would not let Richars have her Countship, would not let him throw her off the district she'd effectively run all these years.

Richars was bad, evil really, in the way he'd tormented her poor brother Pierre and prevented him from starting his own family. He'd paid off the family of one fiancee to get her to go elsewhere, and he'd frightened off another by releasing Pierre's medical records. Then there was the third fiancee who died in a lightflyer accident. It had never been proved to be anything but an accident, but suspicions lingered. And it surely shouldn't matter after all this time that he'd tried to rape her when she was 12, and when she fought him off, killed her new puppy.

The process normally took six months, but hers would be a very rushed job. Half of her time was consumed with travel—three weeks to get to Beta and three weeks back. On the outbound trip she had educated herself on the process. The first primitive sex changes back on Earth had taken up to two years, much of it centered around the patient living as the opposite gender for 6-24 months. On Beta today most of her time was for cramming in the operations themselves, ripening the testicles and continuing the adjustment process. 

Back on Barrayar she had sent Armsman Szabo to see a urologist about a male complaint, and gained some testosterone. Hypo-sprays outbound had given her a head start, but time was very tight. 

Betan therapy had required intensive counseling and psych profiles to determine her ongoing stability. That's one thing Betans were known for, their damn therapy. She didn't think she'd need it. They irritated her, and she was snappy with them, growling even...  
Well—show up with the right equipment in her trousers and the Counts would have to accept her. 

She'd had all the other surgeries: partial mastectomies to reduce her breasts, so gently done that there was barely a twinge. She still missed them and felt her flat chest often; it was very odd to see hairs beginning to sprout. She'd had her chest reshaped and shoulders made broader. She'd had surgery which changed her insides to outsides, as it were. It had been educational to learn that the womanly folds and little nub were really the same as the scrotum and phallus. Testosterone again, and surgery to get things going faster. She could now piss standing up. The tiny scrotum was being stretched by soft silicone beads, larger ones every two days, while Pierre's DNA sample was being inserted into new testicles still growing in the lab. They would still be small back on Barrayar, but would grow fully functional in a few months. Her energy was increasing and her weight lifting was showing results. She could start a child by WinterFair, if she was married by then. 

The Betans had carefully explained that changing around the insides didn't automatically change her original sexual orientation. She might not ever get over her attraction for men. This might not be much of a problem in her marriage and creation of the next generation—plenty of men were platonically married with male lovers. There was by-God Aral Vorkosigan, for one, with his legendary lurid and flamboyant affair with her own uncle Ges. 

The Betans had a method for changing sexual orientation—hypo-sprayed hormones which were oxytocin derivatives, she was informed, which accompanied reward systems to visual images. She hadn't gotten a lot out of the vids—pornography had never moved her.  
However, she had started to notice the rounded bottoms of female attendants, while also admiring broad-shouldered men. It was strange.

Would it be fair to some poor girl to marry and find she was only wanted for her ova, not for herself? Not a nice thing to do, and Donna wanted no part of the mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know reputation her family had. 

Her thoughts strayed to Olivia Koudelka, the only woman who had momentarily caught her attention. After a lifetime of rollicking adventures with men, it was restful to sit with Olivia at parties and receptions. They'd laughed and gossiped while sipping wine any number of times, putting their heads together to whisper, and even gone out to lunch several times. She really was a pretty girl. Would Olivia like her with a beard and no breasts?

She drew a deep breath. This was the last surgery, the final moment of letting go. Today they would remove her uterus and ovaries. She had met Betans who switched sex three or four times in their lifetime, something she could not imagine, but that route was not for her. There was no going back. 

Now she had been moved into the surgical suite. Her gynecologist was there, smiling. Donna had never noticed before how gorgeous she was, with luscious hazel eyes. 

“This is the last step, Donna. I need your permission again before I begin. Are you ready?”

No more ghosts, no more looking back at chances of being a mother, of breastfeeding a tiny baby. It should have been easy to let go... She forced herself back into the here-and-now, which was all that mattered.

“...Yes,” said Dono.


End file.
